Qualcomm may launch its next-gen flagship smartphone processor earlier than usual. While it’s still too early for a precise date, rumors are that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will arrive a few weeks earlier than the 2022 chipset. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 went official in mid-November last year.
The latest rumor about Qualcomm’s next-gen Snapdragon 8 series processor was passed along the Chinese social media platform Weibo by noted tipster Digital Chat Station. The source didn’t go into detail about it but said that the company will unveil the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 “a bit earlier” than last year (via). If true, the new chipset may arrive in late October this year.
If you remember, Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 at the end of November 2021. So last year’s launch was already postponed by a couple of weeks. It appears the American chip giant sees this launch timeframe for its new flagship processors as a little too deep in the year. It seemingly wants to unveil those a bit early. Or maybe it’s about something that we don’t know just yet. Maybe Qualcomm plans to cancel the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2. We shall find out in the coming months.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 rumored specs
It’s been just about three months since the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 went official. Unsurprisingly, there haven’t been many rumors about the third-gen solution yet. However, we have heard that the new chipset will be based on a 3nm fabrication process and manufactured by TSMC. Samsung began the mass production of 3nm chips before the Taiwanese firm, but the latter has achieved healthier yield rates. Samsung will only get Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 orders from Qualcomm if TSMC can’t supply the required volume.
Nonetheless, with a 3nm fabrication process under the hood, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 should be a lot more power efficient than the current chipset. In fact, an alleged Geekbench result of the upcoming Qualcomm processor shared on the Korean forum Meeco earlier this month claimed a 20 percent lower power consumption. However, we have genuine doubts about the authenticity of the report. More so because it claimed that the in-development chipset achieved a single-core score of 1,930 and a multi-core score of 6,236 on Geekbench. That’s about 25 percent more than the average scores of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
While this report may not be accurate, it’s not unreasonable to expect a substantial power and performance gain from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 as compared to the current solution. We should hear more about the next-gen Qualcomm processor in the coming months as the development enters critical stages. We will keep you posted.
2023-02-16 15:04:34